Northwestern University evacuates October 7 play performance after fire alarm was set off

A performance of the verbatim play 'October 7' at Northwestern University's Cahn Auditorium was disrupted and evacuated after a fire alarm was set off on Tuesday. The play, based on survivor testimonies of the Hamas terror attacks, resumed after police clearance, with about half the audience returning for a standing ovation. The incident has been condemned as an antisemitic act by participants and officials.

A performance of the verbatim play 'October 7' at Northwestern University's Cahn Auditorium was abruptly disrupted and evacuated on Tuesday after a fire alarm was set off. The production, written by Irish journalists Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney, is built from word-for-word survivor testimonies detailing the Hamas terror attacks in Israel. Co-creators McAleer and McElhinney were watching via Zoom; McAleer told the Jerusalem Post that approximately a quarter of the way into the show, someone pulled the fire alarm, leaving audience members very scared. Among those in attendance was Abby Polin, the aunt of murdered hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who described the act as 'beyond appalling.' After police and fire authorities gave the all-clear, about half of the roughly 940 audience members returned to watch the final 20 minutes, which closed with a standing ovation. The play's director, Jeff Gurner, dismissed the disruption as an 'absurd little act of imagined revolutionary activism' that achieved nothing. Israel's consul-general in Chicago, Elad Strohmayer, called for a prompt investigation and accountability if the alarm was deliberately set off. The article frames the incident as an antisemitic disruption of a memorial performance, relying on emotional testimony from participants and officials.